


A Distressing Affliction

by kitkatnip



Category: Captain America (Movies), Captain America - All Media Types, Marvel, Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Angst, Gen, Kid Fic, Period-Typical Homophobia, Pre-Captain America: The First Avenger, Pre-Serum Steve Rogers, Pre-Slash, Pre-World War II Bucky Barnes/Steve Rogers, Sickfic, actual baby brooklyn baes, repression sucks, sarah rogers is a good mom, seriously i need more fic of them as actual children
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-22
Updated: 2014-06-22
Packaged: 2018-02-05 19:18:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,894
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1829287
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kitkatnip/pseuds/kitkatnip
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which a young Steve Rogers is very sick, a young Bucky Barnes is very desperate, and a distressed Sarah Rogers sees something she wishes she hadn't.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Distressing Affliction

**Author's Note:**

> This takes place in the spring of 1929, so Steve is ten and Bucky is twelve. I may turn this into a series of drabbles but I'm not entirely sure yet. Also, this is my first time writing for MCU, so feel free to critique to your heart's content!

       " _It's a most distressing affliction to have a sentimental heart and a skeptical mind_.” - Naguib Mahfouz.

* * *

 

 

         If the cards Sarah Rogers had been dealt in life had taught her anything, it was that it was never wise to be a sentimental woman. The pain of loss could never burn you if you kept yourself from loving in the first place.  

       Sarah Rogers was a firsthand witness to the brutality of sudden loss, as so many nurses would be, and therefore Sarah Rogers was supposed to know better than to grow attached to anyone or anything. She had lost her homeland, her husband—and everyone knew, with the child mortality rate as high as it ever was, it was best to remain as unattached to children as possible. You never knew when fate would rip them from your arms, and so it was always best to remain a distant but present figure; unattached to remain unscathed.

       She knew, from the second her son was born, that Steve would be struggling to stay alive with every breath he took. That if he lived long enough to actually lead a life of his own, it would never be easy. That if she let this young, fragile child into her heart, it would break irreparably the moment nature took its course and everything ended the way she inevitably knew it would.  

       However, despite knowing these basic truths, Sarah Rogers was an extremely sentimental woman. She loved her little boy as much as any mother had ever loved their child. That’s what made this so difficult.

       Her Stevie was sick. He was very, very sick. Granted, of course, her son was always sick. It was never like this though. It was never something she couldn’t fix, something she didn’t know how to ease somehow. She couldn’t remember a time she felt as helpless as she did watching her son restlessly sleep, face flushed, breathing erratic, and temperature climbing to near-fatal heights as the day progressed. All she could do was watch and pray. It was a horrible feeling, to have saved so many lives before this but fail to save her own child’s. It was a sick joke. It was life.

       It’d been progressively getting worse over the course of the past few days, but she’d had hope when she walked into Steve’s room that morning. Perhaps someone somewhere had heard her pleading, perhaps by some divine intervention his health would have improved. Her hopes were dashed within a moment’s glance, because Steve’s health had begun to take a turn for the worst.

       It was late afternoon and she was wringing out a cold, wet cloth to place on Steve’s forehead in an attempt to break the fever when she heard a light rapping on her front door. After a moment’s pause, she forced herself to believe that Steve wouldn’t worsen in the few seconds it would take her to see who was at the door, and she dragged herself away from Steve’s bedside to do just that.

       It came as no surprise to her that it was the Barneses’ boy, James, waiting on the other side. As the door opened, he looked up from where he was wringing his beat up old cap in his hands to beam up at Sarah, with a look full of such youthful energy and life that a part of her wished the boy could stay twelve forever and never let the cynicism of adulthood tarnish his spirit. He’d stopped by every day since Steve had gotten sick, inquiring after his friend and asking if he was well enough to play that day. It was with a heavy heart each time that Sarah informed him that, no, he wasn’t. And if it was slightly for her sake more than Bucky’s to add in that Steve would be well enough to play soon, well, she pretended it wasn’t.

       On this particular day, Sarah could not bring herself to lie to such an earnest face. When Bucky asked if Steve was well enough to play, she knelt down to eye level with the boy and spoke to him in a gentle tone.

       “James…Bucky, dear, I’m going to talk to you like a grown up for a moment. Is that okay?”

       His blue eyes widened, confusion etched onto his features, but he nodded nonetheless.

       “You know that Steve is sick. This time, Steve is _very_ sick, it’s very serious. It looks like there’s a chance he…that he might not get better, and if he does, he won’t be able to play for a while yet.” Sarah paused, letting the words sink in and swallowing the bile in her throat as she watched Bucky’s face fall. “You’re the best friend he’s ever had, the only friend he’s ever had and—“

       “Can I talk to him?” The interjection was sudden, and there was such fierce desperation and determination on Bucky’s face that to deny him would have felt cruel. Still, Sarah thought perhaps it might not be for the best, that if Steve really was going to…She didn’t want Bucky’s last memories of Steve to be of him in a state like this, if God forbid this was _it_.

       “Bucky, I’m not sure—“

       “Please, Mrs. Rogers, I promise I won’t be too long and I won’t do nothin’ I ain’t supposed to just…I have to talk to him. Please.”

        She didn’t have it in her to refute his request. Wordlessly she stood and moved back against the door, letting Bucky into the apartment. There was a quick “thank you, ma’am” spouted as Bucky dashed past her straight to Steve’s room. The corners of her mouth turned up just slightly at the sight.

        Sarah had never been one to eavesdrop, yet somehow she found herself lurking by the doorway to Steve’s room, listening to Bucky talk about what seemed like nothing and everything for a good long while. In an odd way, it felt comforting. A small voice in the back of her head called it closure, a vicarious goodbye. She actively ignored it.

       Sarah couldn’t help but feel slightly taken aback by how Bucky seemed to age decades in the few moments he’d been by Steve’s side, noting a weariness and fear in his eyes that she’d seen so many times before in the eyes of grown men back on the front. There was something else present in his gaze, nevertheless; something she would not acknowledge. A trick of the light, something she imagined, perhaps.

        And then, in the blink of an eye, the mindless chatter about the other neighborhood boys and the Dodgers ceased and was replaced by something far less juvenile.

       “Steve…Stevie, buddy, I know you can hear me. You’re gonna get better, you hear? You’ve just gotta, Steve. You need to get better and you need to wake up. We were gonna go to Coney Island together this summer,‘member? And we were gonna break that handstand record that chump O’Riley set and we were gonna save up enough to get that new baseball down at the corner store and we were gonna do lots’a other stuff too. You made a list. We pinky swore. You’re a real punk, you know that? You can’t make promises and then…and then die before you see ‘em through. That ain’t how it’s supposed to work, Rogers.”

       His voice began to crack and it was lined with such desperation, such tenderness, such devotion—such _something_ , something that Sarah had only seen in people well beyond Bucky’s years. She couldn’t seem to swallow the lump in her throat the more she thought about where she’d heard that tone and seen those gazes before.

       “You can’t die on me, Steve, you just can’t. What’s a dumb fella like me supposed to do without his best pal to keep him on the straight and narrow, huh? I…don’t know what I’d do if you were gone. It’s hard to remember what it was like before I had to go around making sure you didn’t get beaten to a pulp because you couldn’t keep your yap shut. I don’t want to remember what it was like before.”

        He paused for a beat, taking in a shuddering breath and fighting so valiantly not to cry.

       “You’re so good, Stevie, you’re _too_ good, you don’t deserve to die. I feel like I’m a better person when I’m with you, y’know, my ma says you keep rubbin’ off on me and I think that’s a good thing. You’re the best guy I know and _it ain’t **fair**_ , it ain’t fair that you get real sick all the time and that you can’t breathe right and I _hate_ it and I hate that there’s nothing I can do to make it better and I’m _sorry_ , I’m so sorry I can’t do nothing to fix it but… _please,_ Steve, please don’t die. I’m beggin’ ya, pal, please. For me. I need you and I need you to get better, so please just do this one thing for me and _don’t die._ ”

        Sarah Rogers’ heart just about broke as she watched Bucky take one of Steve’s small, cold hands in his as silence permeated throughout the apartment. Brooklyn itself, it seemed, had fallen quiet and held its breath in anxious anticipation.

         If the word _love_ echoed across her train of thought, she deafened herself to it. She strained to remain blind to something she could no longer unsee: love in its purest, most innocent and well-meaning form; love that should, by all conventions, be damned as _wrong, wrong, **wrong**_. Despite every conditioned urge in her to be disgusted, repulsed at the very idea, she could not bring herself to hate something so wholesome. Something that created so much joy, that didn’t harm anything or anyone. Something that just _was_.

       Bucky grew quiet after that and left not too long afterward, thanking Mrs. Rogers again for letting him visit Steve before he sullenly made his way back home for dinner. Sarah fell asleep by Steve’s bedside, just as she had every night for the past week. Her hand laid over his weak but still-beating heart, and she wished with all her might that she would still feel it pulsing under her finger tips come the following morning.

      When the fever broke and Steve woke up, a weak but genuine smile working its way across his pallid face, Sarah wasn’t sure if she should be thanking God or Bucky Barnes, so silently, she thanked both.

      As she let Bucky into the apartment later that day and watched from afar as the boy tackled (not too rough, never too rough) her son into a jubilant, relieved hug, she tried to pretend not to notice Steve’s huffed laugh and shy smile and soft eyes. She tried to pretend not to notice Bucky’s overjoyed flush and the complete and utter adoration in his eyes.

      She tried her best to ignore the dreadful feeling that washed over her at the thought of their worlds someday collapsing around the knowledge that it was all wrong, wrong, **_wrong_**. She tried to ignore the way her heart broke for them and hoped, for their sakes, that they wouldn’t make her mistake, that they learn from the cards they were dealt. She hoped with all her might they would not become sentimental men.  

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks so much for reading! If you'd like to chitchat with me or if you have a prompt, you can find me on tumblr at nelsonandmurdicks.


End file.
